What is common prayer?

- The Rev. Jeffery Lee

«Return

Common prayer defines what it means to be the church.  The Prayer Book provides a pattern and resources for structuring our prayer together, but the experience of the prayer itself unites us as believers and followers of Christ.  The church gathered for prayer is the church being most truly what it is: the Body of Christ, taken, blessed, broken and given for the life of the world.

Different congregations will use the resources of the Prayer Book in different ways.  In some congregations worshipers will hold individual copies of the Prayer Book and pray in words that are largely unchanged from the first Prayer Books of the sixteenth century.  Other congregations will use service leaflets or computer-projected texts and music recently composed and authorized for the use of the church.  Styles of music and ceremonial differ widely throughout the church.

Common prayer does not mean absolute liturgical uniformity; it means a variety of gifts gathered into the service of the one Lord Jesus Christ.  The common prayer of the Episcopal Church relies on the deep historic structures of the liturgical tradition of the whole church.  This tradition is a living one and it continues to evolve.  It can do so because in our praying assemblies we encounter the mystery of the dying and rising of the living Christ in whom we are made one.